...EVERYTHING IN LIFE IS WRITABLE ABOUT
IF YOU HAVE THE GUTS TO DO IT, AND THE
IMAGINATION TO IMPROVISE.
THE WORST ENEMY TO CREATIVITY IS SELF-DOUBT.
(Sylvia Plath)
It's not easy though, is it, to go into the mind's dark places? To have the guts to drag things out of the shadowed corners where they lurk, to expose them, to write them into the light? Or to travel into the wounds of the heart - cracked and broken places, so raw they still feel like they're bleeding - and present them to someone else using only print on paper or words on a screen?
I can't write about that, we tell ourselves. Yes, we can. We don't want discomfort or fear to hold our ideas hostage. Imagination can take that monster, can take that heartache and mold it into something that is both of us and not of us. Imagination can set our ideas - can set us - free. If we'll only let it.
This follows the 'write-what-you-know' advice. I personally think writing about personal challenges and adversity is healing.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point about it being healing, Sally. I know, too, that sometimes people talk about having to get distance from a difficult subject before they're able to really write about it.
ReplyDeleteI have this quote scrolling in my Goodreads Favorite Quotes. I can't seem to write about something painful without humor. Maybe that's the improvising part Slyvia meant? It works for me. :-)
ReplyDeleteOh, and something's working for you, too. You might want to check out the Hall of Fame today. Just sayin'.;-)
Cathy, if humor is how you move the painful and the dark out into the light, then go for it. It definitely works for you and, speaking as one of your readers, it works for us, too. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm heading over to the Hall of fame right now...